Looks like you fixed the problem. Now your laptop can get up to 100% load without triggering any thermal throttling. The Thermal Status area shows OK which confirms it no longer throttles.

If you want to improve those temps some more then remove the heatsink and redo the thermal paste. It's not critical to do this now that your laptop is not overheating but if you're bored, go for it. There's always room for improvement.

It lets you play around with your core voltage and some other settings so you might be able to improve your core temperature further by using it. Don't be scared off by the warning message when you first start it. That was more for owners with Extreme CPUs with adjustable multipliers. When you provide an overclocking option, some enthusiasts get a little too enthusiastic.

Intel's newer Core i mobile sensors are rated to be accurate to +/- 5C. The sensors on a 45nm Core 2 Quad like you have are not even close to that accurate so I gave up long ago trying to come up with some sort of perfect calibration.

You can add 2 to Core 3 and set TJMax for that one to 102C but beyond that I wouldn't bother trying to get fancy with adjustments to Idle Calibration factors. You're far better off realizing that these sensors were never designed for 100% accurate core temperature reporting from idle to TJMax and Intel never released enough information or a method to try and calibrate them so I gave up.

The good news is that the sensors on your particular CPU are excellent for a 45nm Core 2 Quad. Many of these had issues at lower temperatures where the sensor would become stuck but none of your sensors in the normal temperature range have this problem. The next problem was that TJMax could vary significantly by 10C from core to core but your numbers show that TJMax is consistent within +/- 2C and it might even be better than that.

Enjoy your Quad and don't get hung up on the core temperatures because it's very difficult to try and prove what core is accurate. There is error in all of these sensors and your CPU has a lot less error than most so be happy. As long as your CPU is stable and not reaching the thermal throttling point at 100C, there's no reason to give your core temperatures a second thought.

RealTemp 3.67 is inside the above download if you would like to upgrade.

I have been getting a lot of crashes on my PC recently. They mostly happen when I'm not actually doing anything. Naturally, I blamed Norton 360 at first as that tends to kick in at idle (or when I'm idle).

Anyway, the problem still persisted, so I started looking at the possibility of overheating memory and processors.

The first time I tried the RealTemp sensor test I got some pretty strange results (See first screenshot). I am assuming that this is because my processor went over the T max of 90C.

I had a look at my BIOS and noticed that Speedstep and CIE were both disabled. After enabling them, it looks like my processor is just managing to stay below the Tmax of 90C. However, it continues to heat up until the CPU load gets down to about 30%.

I'm guessing that with figures like this (with no overclocking) I need to consider buying a new cooling system.

Your CPU is overheating and thermal throttling. That's why you are getting some strange numbers during the sensor test. These sensors wrap around when your core temperatures go beyond TJMax.

Idle temperatures of 76C are a good sign that your CPU heatsink is not making firm contact with your CPU. If you are using the original Intel OEM cooler that came with your CPU then there is a very good chance that 1 of the 4 push pins that secures it to the motherboard is not fully seated. I'm not a big fan of these push pins because it can be difficult to tell sometimes if they are fully seated. When installing a heatsink with push pins, I like installing the heatsink with the motherboard outside of the case so I can flip the motherboard over and be 100% sure that the push pin went through and is seated.

The best thing to do would be to buy some new thermal paste, remove your old heatsink, make sure the fan still works, clean it up and reinstall it with some new thermal paste. Push the push pins in diagonally, two at a time. If you push them in one at a time you can end up with 3 of them in and you will have a difficult time getting the fourth pin to seat. I had a Gigabyte motherboard once that put up quite the fight.

Some of the early E6600 CPUs put out a lot of heat. Once you have fixed the heatsink problem, if there are any options in your bios, you can try lowering the core voltage which can also help lower the amount of heat these CPUs create.

Your CPU is overheating and thermal throttling. That's why you are getting some strange numbers during the sensor test. These sensors wrap around when your core temperatures go beyond TJMax.

Idle temperatures of 76C are a good sign that your CPU heatsink is not making firm contact with your CPU. If you are using the original Intel OEM cooler that came with your CPU then there is a very good chance that 1 of the 4 push pins that secures it to the motherboard is not fully seated. I'm not a big fan of these push pins because it can be difficult to tell sometimes if they are fully seated. When installing a heatsink with push pins, I like installing the heatsink with the motherboard outside of the case so I can flip the motherboard over and be 100% sure that the push pin went through and is seated.

The best thing to do would be to buy some new thermal paste, remove your old heatsink, make sure the fan still works, clean it up and reinstall it with some new thermal paste. Push the push pins in diagonally, two at a time. If you push them in one at a time you can end up with 3 of them in and you will have a difficult time getting the fourth pin to seat. I had a Gigabyte motherboard once that put up quite the fight.

Some of the early E6600 CPUs put out a lot of heat. Once you have fixed the heatsink problem, if there are any options in your bios, you can try lowering the core voltage which can also help lower the amount of heat these CPUs create.

Remembering that my CPU was running at up to 98C earlier today, this is what's happening now:

Happy (but slightly embarrassed) to say that all it needed was very good clean. There was acres of dust between the fins of the heatsink. I couldn't see it until I took my PC downstairs to a room with natural light.

That's a night and day difference and is running a lot cooler than the E6600 I tested. If you have a bios that lets you, it would be easy to overclock that CPU by 25% to 30% now without breaking a sweat. You've proven that it doesn't mind running at high temperatures.

I was looking around for a CPU temperature monitor and RealTemp looks ideal.
But.
It never seems to update the temperature of either core after the first time it's run.
Sometimes it appears to report a correct temperature for at least one core the first time it runs after a cold boot.

I'm including a screenshot of the Cool Down Test, showing constant temperature.
(In the background you can see the CPU usage drop from 100% to 0%, as indicated by the Win7 Task Manager. There is no stepping down as indicated by the left column of the Cool Down Test dialog, there's just a cliff-dive in processor usage. The "noise" in CPU load was due to me, switching tasks and moving windows around to get the screenshot.)

Just for fun, I booted a Linux LiveCD and ran a little bash script calling Debian's acpi utility to generate temperature reports. Similar to the RealTemp cooldown test, I ran a processor-intensive application for several minutes, then killed it, and let "acpi -t" report the temperature as the CPU cooled down.

What you can see is successful updating of the CPU temperature as it cools down.
(There's a pause of 2 seconds between each pair of output lines.)

The 45nm core temperature sensors that Intel uses were never designed to be accurate temperature monitoring devices. Some of these sensors get stuck like you are seeing but I have to admit that your sensors are far worse than average. These sensors were only designed for thermal throttling and thermal shut down purposes at 100C and approximately 125C. If your CPU ever gets hot enough then it is very likely that your core temperature sensors will start functioning more or less correctly. They still are far from 100% accurate even when they are not stuck.

There is a separate temperature sensor located in the center of your CPU. RealTemp is only designed to read the core temperature sensors and ignores this other sensor. You can use a program like Speed Fan or AIDA64. These can read that other sensor. I've never bothered with it because thermal throttling is only based on what the core sensors are reporting. When your core sensors are defective like yours are, data from this other sensor is better than nothing but still fairly meaningless.

Not too important but here's what my E6600 could run on stock voltage.

That's a night and day difference and is running a lot cooler than the E6600 I tested. If you have a bios that lets you, it would be easy to overclock that CPU by 25% to 30% now without breaking a sweat. You've proven that it doesn't mind running at high temperatures.

When you go into the RealTemp Settings window and click on the Nvidia or ATI box, does anything happen? RealTemp gets its GPU temperature info directly from the driver. If something has changed in the driver then there's probably not much I'll be able to do about that.

Nvidia support has been very consistent for quite a few GPU generations as far as I know. ATI on the desktop side isn't too bad but they seemed to have blocked simple temperature monitoring on some of their mobile GPUs. Let me know what you find out when you click on those boxes.

According to:http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/howitworks.html
"Intel defines a certain Tjunction temperature for the processor. This value is usually in the range between 85°C and 105°C. In the later generation of processors, starting with Nehalem, the exact Tjunction Max value is available for software to read in an MSR (short for Model Specific Register).
A different MSR contains the temperature data. The data is represented as a Delta in °C between current temperature and Tjunction."

implemented this recently so I know it is possible:
"3.50 April 2011
New: Read the TJunction (Max) temperature directly from the CPU when possible.

4.10 May 2011
Fixed: (Intel) A read to the CPU to determine the TJunction (Max) temperature, caused the driver to crash on older cpu's.
Now only Family 0x6, Model: 0x1A, 0x1E, 0x1F, 0x25, 0x2C, 0x2E, 0x2A, 0x2D perform a read.
If you know any others that are missing, please let me know.
"

Intel has never publicly released any information about the method they use to set TJMax or how much error is in that number. Some information they have released is not correct, inconsistent or misleading. At one of their Intel Developer Forums they released a new term called TJ Target and told users that actual TJMax may be equal to this target but might also be higher. They weren't quite sure.

TJ Target can only be read from the Core i CPUs. That information can not be read from the earlier Core 2 CPUs because it doesn't exist.

The 85C spec, if it is accurate, is the minimum temperature that the PROCHOT signal can go active. Intel admits that actual TJMax may be higher and it is anyone's guess what that really means or how much higher. Actual TJMax can vary from core to core on the same CPU. Without seeing some test data of actual CPUs, Intel's specs are meaningless. I gave up trying to get the truth out of Intel. That's why RealTemp is adjustable.

If you believe the published TJunction spec is exactly equal to TJMax then you can easily adjust RealTemp and set TJMax to 85C. Without seeing some actual test data or having a T5800 to test, I have no idea what the truth is.

Man I've always said that you should try to forget temps reading and rely only on distance to TJMax (whatever TJMax value is) because this is the only parameter which triggers thermal throttle/shutdown.
It will be a little confusing in the start because instead lower temps you should aim for higher distance to TJmax but you'll get used to.

There's no 100% accurate way to try and calibrate a mobile CPU. Some laptops have very poor cooling solutions or the heatsink is full of dust so they can run very hot.

HWiNFO32 might show a temperature for the main CPU sensor. At idle, that is usually close to the core temperature so you can compare to that.

Another thing you can do is let the laptop sit overnight in Stand By mode. When you resume the next morning, the actual core temperature is usually 0C to 5C higher than the room temperature. You can have RealTemp running with the Logging option checked before you go into Stand By so when you resume you will have some immediate data before the CPU has a chance to warm up very much.

I like burebista's solution best. Just watch Distance to TJMax. That is the only thing truly known about these CPUs. When that number counts down to zero, the CPU will start to thermal throttle and slow down. Avoid that and these CPUs will run at full speed just fine. There's no need to be too concerned about the core temperature of a mobile CPU unless it is so hot that it is throttling. Most older laptops can benefit from a thorough cleaning as well as redoing the thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink.

I like burebista's solution best. Just watch Distance to TJMax. That is the only thing truly known about these CPUs. When that number counts down to zero, the CPU will start to thermal throttle and slow down.

Click to expand...

I already explained that to the owner a few days ago (to watch for "Distance to TJMax" and what it means - it's good that RealTemp shows this raw value which other utilities hide).
And how manually change the TJMax to 85 (which he did) to not be confused by the difference of the shown temperature in different programs.

HWiNFO32 might show a temperature for the main CPU sensor

Click to expand...

By "main CPU sensor" do you mean some other (not known to me) sensor inside the CPU
or you simply mean the motherboard sensor under the CPU (read by sensor chip on motherboard)?